Uri Geller Debunked by James Randi

Contrary to what people might think, I am not some kind of anti-copyright nut. Most of the things I link to are items I would be watching if I were either located in the part of the world they showed for free, or at home when aired. SmashingTelly is, if you like, my VCR.

I don’t link to block-buster pirated movies, and I often end up buying better video quality DVD’s, where available, of my favorites (although region restrictions seem to conspire to put people off buying them). Someday, I hope, I will be able to watch the BBC iPlayer in the US, Hulu in the UK, and embed items from these great services. Hulus’s asynchronous, ad-supported, time limited, service seems to be the model for TV, in future, period.

But this clip is to do with copyright. It’s a 13 minute Youtube clip, debunking the fraudster, Uri Geller. He sued the creators because it contained a 10 second snippet of one of his performances, and has just lost.

“The EFF has really made Geller eat it here: not only has he been forced to withdraw, but they made him license the clip in question as non-commercial Creative Commons to boot, so as to freely aid the efforts of other skeptics.”

Geller’s tactic is the same as the Scientologists’ – to abuse copyright laws to suppress the truth. In other words, to use laws against stealing to protect lying, where the lying is protected because it is possibly a belief.